10 Things that Make You Fall in Love with New Orleans (Again)

1. Catching the Sunset

Sitting on a bench on the Lakefront, feeding the ducks in City Park, walking down Frenchman as you look for a Jazz club, toasting to a day’s work at the Bulldog on Magazine, getting stuck in rush hour traffic on the corner of S. Carrollton and St. Charles…

photo credit: t4ri

…no matter where you are, even on the worst day you’ve had in a while, seeing the bright yellows, oranges and purples of a New Orleans sunset has a way of reviving the soul and inspiring us to continue on.

2. Experiencing Perfect Weather Weeks

These are the weeks when every day has perfect weather (no rain, lower humidity, cool breezes, and puffy clouds) and all of New Orleans shares moments with friends and family on benches, porches, parks and balconies. These are the days we live for, because every other day of the year is either unbearably hot and humid with soupy air or wet and bone-chilling cold with gray, unkind skies.

photo credit: adventureswithflowerbike

When is the best chance to catch perfect New Orleans weather? October, November, March and April are your best bets.

3. Your First Crawfish of the Season (and All Seafood for That Matter)

It’s that moment when you’re sitting in the backyard, bare feet propped up, hanging out, waiting for that tidal wave of small, red, hot, succulent crustaceans, a personal heaven to many a New Orleans local.

photo credit: rosafrancesca

The fixings are always right, no matter if you’re a fan of the corn (and hold the family record of cobs consumed), just love the kick of the crab-boiled potatoes (from hot to need-a-beer-now), have a weak spot for the garlic, personally request white button mushrooms, or just can’t go without the hot dogs or sausages of any kind.

4. Finding a Legal Parking Spot Close to Your Destination

On good days in New Orleans, we hit a sweet spot in traffic and it’s smooth sailing to find parking. On the bad days, it’s a dead-stop slow-moving, honking effort to get anywhere.

photo credit: djpunchntag

We all have one goal: find a legal parking spot. And it’s that moment when you’ve found a spot, it fits your car, it’s under 7 blocks to your destination and your car won’t get towed or ticketed that you immediately feel like you’ve won at New Orleans.

5. Watching Sports for Better or for Worse

Football is more than a sport to us, it’s a way of life. From brilliant plays to discouraging losses to when we don’t understand why we’ve won but we did and it still feels good.

photo credit: made4dre

It’s that moment you look around the Superdome, you feel the immense energy, and you feel like you’re a part of the action, as if your destiny is on the line with every play, and in that energy you’re so proud to be in New Orleans.

6. Hearing Music Wherever You Go

Walking down Royal Street, through Jackson Square, around Frenchmen Street or along any empty street Downtown, you hear the faint sound of music in the distance: a trumpet blaring its heart into the air, or the wild tunes of a bar down the way.

photo credit: jbullard93

This is a city where music lives in our hearts, our souls, and our shoes. Even the local police can’t help but dance along.

7. Finding the Quiet Spaces

It’s easy to get lost in the sounds of New Orleans—the street musicians, the revelry of friends and bachelorette parties, the clink of glasses in restaurants, laughter, dogs barking, car alarms, drunken bar patrons and tons of college kids. But sometimes it’s the quiet spaces that take our breath away the most.

photo credit: ravenouslife

A quiet nook in a local bookstore, a balcony overlooking the bright lights of Bourbon Street, or a section of the levee overlooking the river and the passersby. In those quiet moments, New Orleans feels like home. No matter where you’re from.

8. Making Friends with Strangers

Whether it’s Carnival time or any day of the week, you’ll always find a friend in New Orleans. Down here, hospitality is sharing your beer and BBQ on the parade route, inviting joggers to join in your volleyball game in Audubon Park, and treating everyone like family and friends.

photo credit: davidmoraphoto

Down here, walking around the city and asking for directions can easily turn into a conversation about where the best New Orleans restaurants are, what places you should avoid, or where you can get the hottest, freshest beignets at 2:00am. It’s just how we roll.

9. Seeing People Dancing in the Street

No matter where you go, you’ll see someone dancing. And, the people you see dancing in the street are most likely the locals themselves.

photo credit: josiewill

We celebrate life, joy and everything in general. There’s rarely a day where someone won’t brighten your day by letting the music take them away and you see them dancing in the street excitedly asking you to join in the fun.

10. Realizing Just How Much History is Around Every Corner

Whether you’re Downtown, Uptown, near the lake or by the river, New Orleans history hangs thick in the air. Memories live in courtyards, rumors erupt around street corners and every monument has at least two stories to tell.

photo credit: stewartboston

History weaves itself into the fabric of our city in many ways and forms, and we want you to become a part of it too. Take a tour with us, and fall in love with New Orleans time and again.

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Every step within a New Orleans cemetery is teaming with electricity. Goosebumps rise to your skin. You feel a quake deep within your bones. It’s what haunted stories are made of—that feeling you get whenever you step foot in a City of the Dead. These cemeteries create the suburbs of New Orleans that locals cherish, tourists enjoy, and some would rather forget.

There have been tales and sightings that are enough to make anyone a little bit suspicious. But curiosity always gets the better of us in the Big Easy.

New Orleans cemeteries continue to be a highlight of every trip. Visitors tour the grounds housing lives past, and learn about their history. They learn about the famous deceased, the reasons why we bury above ground, and most importantly they see the various types of graves we feature in each cemetery.

Take a photo or three, walk aimlessly, take a tour with a group, take it all in, just be sure to keep your friends close and your loved ones closer. You never know who will stop by to say hello.

3 Common Types of Graves Found in New Orleans Cemeteries

New Orleans families used to bury their loved ones in the ground and encountered a problem: exposure to wet soil would inspire a visit from PawPaw you weren’t expecting. For the better part of New Orleans history, we’ve seen more and more above-ground cemeteries, tombs, and vaults. Below you will find a list of some of the types we see regularly within these historical cemeteries.

1. Coping Graves
2. Ledger Stones
3. Wall Vaults and Oven Vaults

Coping Grave

These types of burial sites are made of a set of plaster-sealed stone, marble, or granite walls that seal off the coffin from pending water levels. Generally, coping graves remain uncovered, with the exception of gravel, and can be built to around 3 feet above the ground.

Ledger Stone

Watch where you step. These large and flat stones are placed on top of the grave plot to seal in the coffin. Some of the Ledger Stones in the New Orleans cemeteries are engraved—with family history, personal touches, and well wishes.

Wall Vaults and Oven Vaults

Each of the original New Orleans cemeteries are surrounded by a perimeter of wall and oven vaults. These walls of tombs were meant to be used to house the dead of for an entire family line. Well after the funeral, the remains could be pushed to the back receptacle, to make room for the next deceased.

If Walls Could Talk (Again)

Walk into any New Orleans cemetery and you can feel it—you are literally surrounded by the deceased. They’re in the walls, they’re housed all around, and there’s always a sneaky suspicion they never stay in one place.

In New Orleans, these Cities of the Dead are prime real estate. There’s a rich side, a poor side, the elegant plots and the ones that look forgotten. You can inherit burial space. You can even buy a new plot for yourself before you die. It’s no wonder the dead never really leave us down here.

Have you ever walked through the past? Want to get up close and personal with the oldest citizens of New Orleans? Come join us for a tour and learn about the histories these graves conceal from the world.

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If there is going to be a food tour anywhere in the world, it should be in New Orleans: the capital of flavor, finesse, and the freedom to eat.

Food means more to us down here—it’s our best memories, it’s a new beginning, it’s possibility itself (we don’t call it soul food for nothing).

But what makes a meal stick so well in our memories? Why do we always talk about food?

The Recipe of New Orleans Dining

In the Big Easy, the difference between “just another dinner” and an earth-shattering meal has everything to do with the big picture. It’s when the details blend together that we find the ultimate sensory experience—body and soul.

You’ll find the recipe below.

Food: a Necessity and a Luxury

It’s comforting to come home on a weeknight and quickly turn the evening into a night on the town, complete with Tapas, Gumbo, Grilled Paninis, Seafood Pizzas, Oysters on the Half Shell, Chicken Parmesan, or even delicate dinner Crêpes. Limitless options yield limitless possibilities. And they’re all delicious.

C-W-B: Cocktails, Wine, or Beer

Whether you’re sitting down, standing up, or dancing around a tailgate, the rule of C-W-B is simple: if you like beer, drink it, if you perfer wine, enjoy it, if cocktails are a must, then so it shall be!

The drinks you pair with your meal have everything to do with your mood. Be merry and drink what you like (even if it’s water).

Ambiance: the Woah Factor

This is what having a good time feels like. You’re laughing with friends or family. The one you love is looking at you as if magic is the electricity that you share when you kiss.

It’s romance. It’s hilarity. It’s intense.

Ambiance all about enjoying the moment, whatever moment that is—intimate, casual, professional, or formal—and rolling with it. It’s where “Laissez les bons temps rouler” comes from.

Company: Tying it All Together

Down here, we have nothing unless we share it. But it’s not only about the Facebook food posts and the stories we share over Boiled Crawfish and a cold one. It’s the people. We share good food, great times, and tasty drinks to do only one thing: make a connection.

Meals in New Orleans are a game changer. They can turn enemies into friends, and friends into lovers. You never know where the moment will take you.

Share a meal, a bottle of wine (or two), and play everything by ear. Enjoy the ride.

The post How We Savor New Orleans appeared first on Livery Tours.

It’s meant the world to me. It gave me a lot of experience. It opened my ears up to different sounds and different sounds and different types of music and opened my heart and eyes up to different people.

The idea of New Orleans comes alive in the Second Line of a brass band parade. The Second Line are the followers, dancing behind the band; these are friends and family and complete strangers. To be a part of a Second Line, one must only feel the emotion in the music and follow it.

Locals in New Orleans both see and participate in Second Lines at different events throughout the year.

As a people of the Big Easy, we use music to celebrate because it expresses a full range of emotion. Music marks all sorts of occasions down here. It expresses the hurt, the sadness and the joys of life, while also creating a connection throughout the community, especially when this music is played throughout the neighborhoods.

What are the common events that experience a New Orleans Second Line?

• Weddings
• Business Events
• Social Events
• Funerals

Since its very beginning, New Orleans jazz has been about the movement of the music, how it makes the heart follow the beat of the drum and the sway of the brass band.

When a brass band really starts kicking: when club members and second liners get into their groove, dancing for all they’re worth, it’s as if the parade becomes a single existence. From afar, a Second Line looks like a human locomotive rushing by. In the middle, one can become lost in time and space, swept up in the rhythms and emotions.

Second Lining has always been a quintessential art form of New Orleans, a jazz funeral without a body.

It’s All About the Second Line

The Second Line began as a funeral procession. A band would accompany the hearse and all of the mourners to the cemetery, playing solemn, sad hymns as they walked closer to the deceased’s final resting spot. After the body was buried, the mourners would dance their way out of the cemetery with the band playing happy tunes, giving them a chance to celebrate life and leave their loved one on a happy note.

These were known as Jazz Funerals.

With the introduction of Pleasure Clubs and Social Aid Clubs throughout New Orleans, Jazz Funeral processions were incorporated into annual parades made by the clubs. Jazz Funerals (with their African and European mingled traditions) brought so many strangers and friends together to express honor, grief, sorrow, joy, even, humor—Club Parades eventually followed their lead and made Second Lining into a truly constant community affair, celebrating life and mourning the loss of loved ones.

Originally, the benevolent societies were established to provide a type of insurance to African-Americans and their families. The main point of club involvement and dues was to take care of the sick and bury the dead. Different clubs are involved in social services to varying degrees, but all remain community organizations that act as a core to their neighborhoods.

“A social aid and pleasure club is two things. The first is family-hood. A club is like brothers and sisters; they keep in step. The second part is the culture that they’re really trying to keep going. They’re not trying to keep it going for New Orleans. They’re really trying to keep it going for their ancestors , so when they look back they can say, ‘My Mama did this or my Daddy did this.”‘ –Sylvester Francis, curator of the Backstreet Cultural Museum.

The clubs come in all sizes. Some have just a handful of members dancing to a single brass band. Some have several units parading. Some parades are elaborate affairs, while others are quite simple. But most people would agree that it is the music that controls a parade—it sets the tempo and the attitude. No matter the change in music style (Jazz, R&B, Blues, etc.) the beat of the Second Line stays the same. Whether they parade through Tremé and Central City, around the Seventh Ward, Uptown, Marigny, Ninth Ward, and even in the middle of Mid-City, Second Liners continue this New Orleans tradition that speaks to both our past and future in the Big Easy.

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With the coming of the 20th Annual Essence Festival in two weeks, we are reminded of what makes New Orleans the place to be: music. It’s the personification of emotions and memories, it’s the tinge of a broken heart, it’s the hope we have for days to come. In celebration of this year’s Essence Festival, we’ve gathered a bit of history about one of New Orleans’ primary cultural resources—her neighborhoods.

While our city is filled with poverty-stricken areas and has seen more than her fair share of disasters, both social and natural, our neighborhoods hold the hearts of great people who have changed and forged our culture.

When you think of New Orleans, you think: art, music and the greatness of freedom. No matter the circumstance, the people of New Orleans have always had the final say in what defines the city as a whole. One of the city’s oldest neighborhoods, and America’s oldest African American neighborhood, Faubourg Tremé, is the primary example of the spirit we’ve come to know and love in the Big Easy.

History Highlights: Faubourg Tremé

Known today as the Sixth Ward and originally known as “Back of Town,” Faubourg Tremé remains an important center of the New Orleans’ African-American and Créole culture, especially with the birth of the modern brass band tradition and Jazz music. Near the end of the 18th century, Claude Tremé purchased the Morand Plantation and the land of two adjacent forts—St. Ferdinand and St. John—to build Faubourg Tremé. Over the years, the city developed subdivisions throughout the area to house a diverse population that included Caucasians, Haitian Créoles, and freed African Americans, and while Tremé has seen the effects of drugs and crime, its creative heart  beats loudly and proudly day after day.

At the “center” of Tremé was Congo Square, which began as Place des Nègres—a place where slaves gathered to dance on Sundays. Music was never far from Congo Square, brass and symphonic bands gave concerts in the open-air market over the years.

These bands played in a more improvisational style, letting the emotions move the notes and the beat and the people dancing in the street. The concerts of Congo Square provided a necessary foundation for what we know of today as New Orleans Jazz. When you stop by for Essence Festival this coming July, be sure to take a tour of New Orleans and find out more about our history.

Tremé Musicians You May Know:

• Alphonse Picou
• Kermit Ruffins
• Lucien Barbarin
• “The King of Tremé” Shannon Powell
• Henry Ragas
• Louis Prima
• Alex Chilton

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Jazz Fest fully defines New Orleans—a perfect balance of food, music, chaos and never ending beauty. This coming weekend marks the beginning of the 2014 New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. Past, present and future generations of New Orleans go to this event seeking the truest of New Orleans experiences: eating the food, hearing the movements of the music, and dancing along to the sounds of NOLA.

This weekend marks a time where everyone in New Orleans, whether local or visitor, become a New Orleanian. We become a singular celebration made up of separate songs and sounds and flavors.

“With 12 stages of soul-stirring music—Jazz, Gospel, Cajun, Zydeco, Blues, R&B, Rock, Funk, African, Latin, Caribbean, Folk, and much more—the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival is a singular celebration.”

A Little Bit Of History

Mahalia Jackson, often called the greatest gospel singer, returned home to New Orleans to attend the Louisiana Heritage Fair in Congo Square. She and Duke Ellinton happened upon the Eureka Brass Band leading a crowd of second-line revelers through the Festival grounds. Little to his knowledge, George Wein, the producer of the Louisiana Heritage Fair, began the tradition that was later named the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival by handing Mahalia Jackson a microphone. She sang along with the band and joined the parade, creating a mixture of soul and jazz. Thus, the spirit of Jazz Fest was born.

The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival continues to celebrate the sounds and flavors of Louisiana with the spice of the local cuisine combined with the passion of a gospel hymn and the joy of a jazz parade. Today, there is a wide variety of music styles and genres, food booths, and arts and crafts and a collection of evening concerts series—a construct that has proven to be vastly appealing and enduring.

The First Jazz Fest Lineup:

• Mahalia Jackson
• Duke Ellington
• Pete Fountain
• Al Hirt
• Clifton Chenier
• Fats Domino
• The Meters
• The Preservation Hall Band
• The Olympia Brass Band
• Mardi Gras Indians

The Great New Orleans Artists of Jazz Fest

• Professor Longhair
• Fats Domino
• The Neville Brothers
• Wynton Marsalis
• Dr. John
• Branford Marsalis
• Harry Connick Jr.
• Ellis Marsalis
• The Radiators
• Irma Thomas
• The Preservation Hall Jazz Band
• Allen Toussaint
• Buckwheat Zydeco
• The Dirty Dozen Brass Band
• Better Than Ezra
• Ernie K-Doe
• Vernel Bagneris
• The Zion Harmonizers
• Beausoleil

The Growth of Jazz Fest

In 1970, only about 350 people attended the Festival, which quickly grew to 80,000 people in 1975—such a large amount of growth in only 5 years time. This momentum continued as Jazz Fest began to gain wide acclaim as one of the world’s greatest cultural celebrations by the 1980s.

In the 1990s, as stated by The New York Times, Jazz Fest was taking a permanent place in New Orleans Culture, becoming “inseparable from the culture it presents.”

The Things that Stick with Us

What is now recognized as the most popular poster series in the world, Jazz Fest posters were introduced in 1975. These colorful designs remain a token of New Orleans culture and the best reminder of just how unique the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival truly is.

Below is a small sampling of Jazz Fest posters throughout the past years. Be sure to check out this year’s design when you’re out and about on those Fair Grounds this weekend.

Jazz Fest 1976

Jazz Fest 1992

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New Orleans is a photographer’s dream. So, naturally, all of the locals like to Instagram the Big Easy as much as possible.

And with as many festivals and celebrations we have down here, there are endless photo opportunities. Impromptu photos. Selfies galore. Hashtags organizing the city by event and time of year.

Every Spring, hundreds of people gather around the streets of New Orleans to enjoy the free music and the various flavors that French Quarter Festival has to offer. Break out your favorite straw hat and head to the French Quarter for some much needed down time in the city. Catch up with old friends, meet some new ones, and take some really killer Instagram pictures.

As hundreds of people captured the French Quarter Fest in New Orleans using the hashtag #FQF, we have to ask one question.

How do you immortalize New Orleans on Instagram?

5 Ways to French Quarter Fest

1. Watch New Orleans. Take in the sights.

2. Take “Obligatory Food Shots” and make your friends hungry. 

3. Capture the Music

4. Gaze at the St. Louis Cathedral

5. Take Necessary Selfies

New Orleans in the Spring is a place to branch out and stretch and take in all of the magic that a little bit of sunshine, good friends, great food and the country’s favorite atmosphere brings to the table. It’s not hard to be a local in New Orleans, but it’s second nature when the sun comes out to play.

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The heart of the French Quarter is a Square. As a city, New Orleans bursts with life, activity and energy. From its construction in 1721 to its current events and guests, Jackson Square has played a large role in New Orleans culture, and continues to be the center of attention and a center for creative cultivation.

Walk down any of the streets in New Orleans and they will lead you to Jackson Square, the oasis in the middle of a busy city. Many historical events and cultural changes have been witnessed in this space, namely the Battle of Jackson Square in March of 1873.

Since its construction in 1721, the square has held events that create a tone that feels every emotion on the spectrum. It’s an atmosphere that is hauntingly beautiful, safe and electric. Gradually, its beginnings as the Place d’Armes—the armory and place of punishment and war—shifted. As the years passed, so did Jackson Square change into the incredibly eye-catching, beautiful and peaceful space that it is today.

Original uses of the Place d’Armes:

• A site of public execution
• A site of public punishment/humiliation (stock yard)
• Served as an arsenal (March 1873)
• The site of the Battle of Jackson Square

Current uses of Jackson Square:

• A site of wedding nuptials and receptions
• A gathering place of painters of widely varying talents
• A stage for local and traveling musicians, jugglers and magicians
• A home for tarot and palm readers

While not named Jackson Square until after the Battle of New Orleans, the area has maintained the same shape over the years: the square of wrought iron fencing with the St. Louis Cathedral flanked by the identical façades of the Cabildo and Presbytere in the background. The upper and lower Pontalba buildings close the square in on the left and right. This view has not changed for nearly 300 years, but the events and people you’d see within the space have changed a lot.

The Balance of Time

Jackson Square has been a place of celebration, triumph, humiliation, pain, creativity and (most importantly) strength.

The square’s past balances with its present role as an outdoor studio, theater and recreational park. Today, artists work and display their art pieces along the iron fence. Visitors can walk around and see the collection of art that New Orleans has to offer, as well as listen to the different musicians playing for tips and the good of their souls. It’s a space charged with energy. Tarot readers sit throughout the space, telling people of their inner hopes and what the world could offer them in return for honest work and clear convictions. Some can stop by a caricaturist and have their faces immortalized in charcoal and pastels. Others, sit and watch it all happen.

From its troublesome beginnings to its artistic present, one thing rings true about the transformation of Jackson Square: progress is controlled chaos.

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Around the world, history tends to repeat itself. Well, in New Orleans, history never really goes away in the first place. Iconic slogans, brands, and landmarks are at the forefront of memories and stories.

In honor of every childhood memory in New Orleans, we’ve gathered the 4 New Orleans Traditions that have a permanent place in our hearts and minds.

4 New Orleans Traditions We’ll Never Forget

1. K&B Drug Store And “K&B” Purple

K&B (Katz and Besthoff) was a drug store chain that rooted itself in New Orleans and in the hearts of many locals. Since its founding in 1905, K&B became a signature drug store that offered quality prices for quality products that sported the memorable purple color. As it expanded across the United States Gulf Coast, the purple stores created a regional chain.

K&B Purple, seen on nearly everything in the store, from the shopping carts to the K&B brand products (including logo ice chests and garbage cans) and employee uniforms, truly branded the K&B experience—a friendly store that offers options suited for the King of Carnival, and the convenience wasn’t bad either. “K&B Purple” became well known as a descriptive term in local lexicon—just as a car can be “forest green,” New Orleanians still describe a particular shade of purple as “K&B Purple.”

Even though K&B was purchased by Rite Aid in 1997, the purple sign has remained in the minds and hearts of many locals, who now purchase vintage shirts sporting the old K&B logo in remembrance.

2. Eating McKenzie’s Turtles

McKenzie’s Bakery and their pastries (especially the Turtles) have been a constant memory that refuses to fall into the past. While K&B physically disappeared, this chain of pastry shoppes is still in business today…even though they’re managed by an old competitor—with limited access to original recipes and ingredients.

Founded in 1924 by Henry McKenzie in Uptown New Orleans, McKenzie’s Bakery was sold to Daniel Entringer who kept the bakery’s name and grew the business throughout New Orleans with McKenzie as manager. When McKenzie died, Entringer passed the management down to his sons. Donald and Gerald expanded the company into a chain that had marvelous staying power until a bad health review in 2000 brought the chain to bankruptcy.

The McKenzie’s Pastry Shoppes might have been shut down but the logo and recipe rights were eventually awarded to Tastee Donuts (a long-time rival) which then re-opened several shoppes around New Orleans holding both brand names, and selling a good selection of the original pastries.

While not many things last forever, McKenzie’s donuts, turtles, blackout cake, buttermilk drops and the king cakes that started the New Orleans King Cake craze have held a steady place in the hearts of many locals and continue to satisfy their taste buds.

3. Groceries from Schwegmann’s Supermarkets

1869 marked the beginning of change in the grocery world for New Orleans. Garrett and his two brothers, Anthony Schwegmann and Paul Schwegmann, opened the first Schwegmann Brothers Giant Super Market in the Bywater neighborhood, a store which grew to be 18 super markets in the metro New Orleans area by 1995. While the chain of super markets were wiped out in 1996, the store and its ideals and services were pioneer movements in the development of the modern supermarket.

With around 5,000 employees, Schwegmann’s was the biggest supermarket in the world at one point, selling everything from gourmet food to garden supplies.

But the real innovation was the introduction of self-service shopping. With such a massive store, Schwegmann’s began the movement towards our modern self-serving grocery stores (even though it took a while for the concept to catch on). They encouraged customers with a discount to gather their own items from the shelves and bring baskets to the checkout counter. This change doomed the smaller stores that were still abiding by the old tradition of having the proprietors fill each customer’s order.
Now, we don’t even think about it. Self-serve is quick, and liberating.

4. Going to See the Special Man

I say, I say, I say, Frankie and Johnny’s is a good note to end on: Let ‘em have it. Don’t fret over holding on to the good memories. They’ve had a part in creating who we are today, so they never leave us.

These iconic New Orleans memories and cultural highlights create what we know of as New Orleans culture. Our tendency to mix, our love of the past and our hopes for the future are all about living in the present. We keep memories and continue to push forward to the new memories. What will be the next New Orleans Tradition? That’s up to you.

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Dixieland Jazz Music, also known as New Orleans Jazz or “Hot” and “Early” jazz was saw its beginnings in the 1910s. Hot Jazz was fitting for the New Orleans music; because of its ever changing beats and unpredictable nature, Jazz in New Orleans is hotter than a boiling pot of rice. Not too long after its energetic entrance into the music world, Dixieland Jazz spread from New Orleans to Chicago and New York City and remains one of the highlights of New Orleans culture.

Dixieland is a name given to the style of jazz performed by early New Orleans jazz musicians, in reference to the “Old South.” But the music’s style is everything but old.

The Dixieland style combines earlier brass band compositions, French Quadrilles, biguine, ragtime tunes and blues numbers with collective, polyphonic improvisation—it’s a team effort that ebbs and flows from one solo and accompaniment to another. Every number is unique to the players, the venue, the drinks and the mood. It’s a hodgepodge of energy and you can’t help but dance along without a care in the world.

While instrumentation and size of bands can be very flexible, the “standard” band consists of trumpets/cornets, trombones, clarinets with a “rhythm section” of at least a guitar or banjo, string bass or tuba, piano and drums to tie it all together. Some bands mix and match, and others just go with the flow.

What are the Key Players in a New Orleans Dixieland Jazz Band?

Upright Base for the Beat

Clarinet to Keep it Smooth

Drums for the Needed Surprise

Guitar for Your Heart

Piano for Your Mind

Saxophone for the Sad Past

Trombone for Longing

Trumpet for Strength

The definitive Dixieland sound is created when one instrument—usually the trumpet—plays the beginnings of a variation of a recognizable melody or tune, and the other band members follow the leader and improvise around that melody. This creates an organic and multidimensional sound that speaks to several emotions and states of mind and time. Instead of the extremely regimented big bands of the time, Dixieland Jazz began the movement towards the music of the heart and soul in the South.

It’s hard to define Jazz music because of it’s versatility. By locals, it is a state of mind—one that you either understand or don’t.

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